This is a thoughtful exploration of slow travel and European railway journeys. The content here would be a fully developed essay about the philosophy and practice of mindful, deliberate travel.
The Challenge of Modern Tourism
Contemporary travel has become industrialized. We optimize for efficiency, maximize destinations visited, minimize time spent getting there. But something essential is lost in this equation.
When travel becomes purely about arrival, when the journey is reduced to an inconvenience to be minimized, we lose access to one of travel's greatest gifts: the transformative power of transition itself.
What Trains Offer
Rail travel operates on a different logic. You board in one city center and arrive in another, watching the landscape transform gradually. There's no teleportation, no sudden arrival in a foreign place with only airport liminal space as preparation.
The hours on trains are not wasted time. They're when integration happens—when you process where you've been, prepare for where you're going, or simply exist in the present moment of motion.
The Gift of Attention
Perhaps most valuably, slow travel creates conditions for sustained attention. When you have eight hours on a train through the Alps, you can't scroll through your phone the entire time. You look out the window. You think. You notice.
This isn't nostalgia for a pre-digital age. It's recognition that some experiences require extended, uninterrupted attention—and that modern life rarely provides the conditions for such attention.